She was sitting with her head down on her knees, her bandaged arm held to her buckskin shirt when Eli rode up and slid to a stop. Miranda looked up to... see Eli and thought she was dreaming. She had just prayed he would come home, and now he was here.“ELI,” she screamed and lunged at him as she came off the ground to grab him with her good arm.“Miranda, are you alright? Are you hurt bad? Is our baby alright?”“Eli, I knew you’d come. I just knew you’d be here to help. Yes, I’m alright. I’ve got a. Michelle, the driver and I both saw a quick flash before everything went dark. It could have been an old electromagnetic pulse weapon from fifty years ago. I had Frankie, the engineer, do a hard reset of all systems. Nothing, and five minutes wasted. Then, I remembered a rumor that some rebels may have mines or devices which triggered the "Kill Switch". Our leaders vehemently denied such a device was even possible; let alone scrubby colonists from the edges of the Republic. That definitely had. Instantly and just like that, I became a blubbering idiot. I went off on a tangent explaining who I was, who my sister was, why I was in his apartment, and begging him to, "Please, please, for the love of God, please don't shoot my dumb ass!"'Holy fuck, kid, shut the fuck up already, or I will shoot you," he said with a look of disgust.With those words and with one fluid motion, he pulls the gun to him while at the same time pulling back on the slide, ejecting the bullet in the chamber.I. Jonn Dymoke’s face paled, he had taken my mischievous remark as serious comment. “Do you think someone will take up my challenge, Colonel?”“Well, John, there has to be a first time for everything, and as there has been no coronation in sixty years who knows what maniac might come hurtling out of the bushes swinging a sword, or more probably a claymore — there are many Scots who still favour the Stuart cause.” I know I should not have teased the poor fellow, but he was so gullible it was.